Online Reporter
Precious Manomano
Herald Reporter
The Government is scaling up implementation of the Agriculture, Food Systems and Rural Transformation Strategy, with agriculture and land-based investments emerging as key drivers of rural development and industrial growth.
In an interview Agriculture Permanent Secretary, Professor Obert Jiri, said agriculture-led investments have a far-reaching impact on economic development, particularly when combined with local value addition and beneficiation, which help accelerate industrialisation.
He said the Rural Development 8.0 programme is a critical pillar of this strategy, as it focuses on decentralising development and empowering communities through Village Business Units and School Business Units tailored to each area’s unique needs.
“We continue with the implementation of the agricultural food systems and rural transformation strategy. Rural development becomes key. It is agriculture that can accelerate rural development, rural transformation and certainly economic development,” Prof Jiri said.
He explained that Government has deliberately broken down rural development into smaller, more manageable units to ensure interventions have a direct and meaningful impact at the community level.
The village-based approach, he said, allows for tailor-made solutions that enable each rural area to develop according to its specific strengths and opportunities.
“It is important to see that we have really downscaled rural development and packaged it into small silos, which can have an impact at the local level. If you look at our unpacking, where we are saying we have this village-based thrust — village business units, school business units — these are local innovations tailor-made for each village to ensure that each village can develop and each rural area can develop as it should,” he said.
In addition, Government has introduced a programme to identify and assign a flagship industry to every district. This move aims to strengthen production systems and ensure that each district builds its economy around what it produces best.
“So that is the thrust that we are now having, to ensure every rural economy is identified by what it must produce and what it produces going forward,” Prof Jiri said.
He also underscored the importance of integrating youth into agriculture, noting that young people are central to both the future and present of the sector. He said there is a deliberate effort to harness technology and innovation to make agriculture more appealing, modern, and commercially viable for the youth.
According to Prof Jiri, Government has begun rolling out youth-led business units focused on value chains aligned with young people’s interests and expectations — particularly those that are technology-driven and less labour-intensive.
He added that modern agricultural ventures such as cage fish farming and high-value crops like blueberries are among the opportunities being promoted to encourage youth participation.
Prof Jiri said the focus is on identifying smart, technologically driven, and digitally empowered value chains that young people can actively engage in, while transforming agriculture into a business-oriented sector.
“Young people want something attractive and smart . . . so if we harness technology and deploy it with the young people, we can make investments that are attractive and driven by them for development,” he said.
The Agriculture, Food Systems and Rural Transformation Strategy is expected to strengthen rural economies, promote value addition and industrial growth, and position agriculture as a modern, competitive, and inclusive sector capable of driving Zimbabwe’s development.
